THE ROLE OF THE COST AND QUALITY IN ADDITIVE MANUFACTURING

Abstract

Global competition demands faster and more economically production process, products to be more personalized with modern design, sophisticated and of higher quality. Companies are looking for new solutions and production technologies to achieve these requirements. Although they have been on the market for almost 30 years, it is only in the last decade that additive manufacturing (AM) technologies have reached a certain level of maturity to be accepted in the wide industry. Currently additive manufacturing is in a period of transition from its initial purpose for the rapid prototyping and small series to the serial production of parts. On that path, there are still obstacles that slow it down in the form of costs associated with the production process (machines, materials), the lack of advance process control, traditional approach to R&D, education of engineers and the lack of software integration from design stage to post processing. Main focus of this paper is cost analysis in AM. In this regard paper will give brief overview of some developed cost models which brought significant novelties in the cost models considering the economics of AM and quality. Based on this analysis the paper will present suggestions what should be included in new cost model for production of end usable metal parts produced by PBF technology. Also, some quality inspection methods for AM will be briefly explained.